


what if i lose it all

by AliuIce0814



Series: cough syrup [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Winter Soldier feels, avengers to the rescue, i wrote this monstrosity for abby, it's okay steve your old friends are just dead or absolutely insane, maybe i will update this someday shhh, mishmash of canons, sam is an iron patriot fanboy, sometimes i write action sequences, steve and sam are my brotp, tasha is pretty and will kill you with her thighs, would you look at falcon training a real falcon, would you look at that superbowl trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliuIce0814/pseuds/AliuIce0814
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve got assigned to this SHIELD detail, he thought the worst of his problems would be managing his anxiety without his team around to support him. </p>
<p>Oh, how wrong he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what if i lose it all

**Author's Note:**

> This monstrosity is dedicated to Abby, who demanded Winter Soldier trailer fic. Love you, kid, and I'll see you in a couple weeks.
> 
> Unbetaed, written at night. 
> 
> TW for anxiety, PTSD, violence, brainwashing. Canon-typical violence.

            “Don’t forget to breathe,” Bruce said before Steve left the Tower. It was both their own secret code and a reminder Steve desperately needed. Steve breathed from his midsection instead of his chest. Some of the tension seeped out of his muscles; the tightness in his chest eased up. Bruce smiled slightly. “Better?”

            “Yeah. C’mere.” Steve pulled Bruce into a hug. Bruce hugged back immediately, not tensing or hesitating the way he had years ago. Steve buried his face in his shoulder and inhaled, exhaled. What was he going to do without Bruce? Tony? Clint? Thor? Tasha was coming to the Helicarrier with him to help him with the transition to his new position at SHIELD, but what would he do without the rest of his team? It was like going into battle with just one of the Commandos: utterly unthinkable. Steve’s eyes burned. “I’ll miss you.”

            Bruce rubbed his back. The role reversal made Steve shudder. They’d all grown so much, together, as a team. What was he supposed to do without them? “I’ll wait right here. I won’t go anywhere.”

            Steve’s chest tightened again at the promise. A vow not to run from Bruce was the ultimate sign of his loyalty. No, not loyalty. Love. “Don’t you forget to breathe either, okay?” He forced himself to pull away and shoulder his duffel bag. If Bruce took off his glasses to rub his eyes, Steve wasn’t going to mention it. “You have my number. Call if you need anything.”

            “You’ll be on a mission.”

            “It can wait a little while for you. Any of you. Tell Tony I said that, all right?”

            Bruce pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and gave him a rueful look. “I’ll pass it on, along with the scolding.”

            “I wanted to say goodbye to him. He shouldn’t lock himself away in his lab like that. He knows better than to sulk.”

            “But that’ll sound better coming from me rather than from you, right?”

            Steve shrugged. On the roof, the Quinjet’s engine rumbled. Tasha was waiting on him. He had to leave behind the stars and stripes and wear the mantle of Commander Rogers for a while. He guessed he owed it to SHIELD for breaking him out of the ice. At least he’d had time with his team for a while. He’d come back to them, he told himself firmly. They weren’t Bucky. He could come back to them in the end. “Take care.”

            The image of Bruce, one hand raised in farewell, watching the elevator doors close followed Steve all the way to the Quinjet. Tasha cast him a sympathetic look as he strapped himself into the seat beside her. “It never stops being rough, Cap.”

            “Commander,” Steve corrected automatically. The word felt wrong on his tongue. He shook his head. “Don’t I know it.” He’d left behind too many people already. Who else could he lose in a year?

…

            Steve didn’t like Sam because he reminded him of Clint. Maybe his wry way of looking at things was a little Hawkeye-like, but when Sam asked him if he liked him “just ‘cause I make you think of some other guy with a bird name,” Steve said no. Vehemently no. Sam was a good man, a smart man, a brave man. A New Yorker, too, even if he was from Harlem, not Brooklyn. Steve spent his hours not working or sparring with Tasha talking to Sam.

He would never forget the day he discovered that Falcon kept a real falcon in his quarters. Their first Saturday off, they took Redwing to the Appalachians to hunt. Steve watched in fascination as Sam whistled the call notes and the bird spun down to land on his padded wrist. Sam gave him a guarded look. “Pretty cool, huh?”

            “That was amazing.” Steve did his best to scrape his jaw off the ground. “How?”

            Sam’s gleeful grin made Steve smile, too. “Let me show you.”

            As Redwing took off again, Steve’s chest loosened for the first time in weeks.

            …

            “Turn around,” Steve instructed.

            Sam raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? What are you looking at?”

            “Turn around and pop your wings. I want to take a picture for Tony.”

            Sam’s eyes widened. “You want to send Iron Man a photo of my wings?”

            “Yeah. He’ll love them. He’ll be absolutely crazy about them. I’ll probably have to give him your number so he won’t harass me for answers I don’t know.” Steve could just picture Tony’s slack-jawed look when he got a look at the wings Sam had built for himself. He’d have to film him in flight sometime. He’d thought what Stark did with his suit was a thing of grace, not that he’d ever tell Tony, but Sam’s flight was practically dance, just as beautiful as any of the soaring Redwing did. Maybe it’d be the thing to pull Tony out of his latest funk.

            “All right.” Sam turned around. His wings spread, grey and mechanical and awesome. Steve snapped a few pictures with his phone, turning it this way and that to try to get the best angle. “On one condition,” Sam said. Steve could hear the mischief in his voice.

            “Yeah? What’s that?”

            “You gotta send a pic to Iron Patriot, too. If you’re gonna show me off to your superfriends, you’d better show me off to the best damn superhero there is.”

            Steve smiled. “Fair enough.”

…

            “You seem to be doing all right.” Tasha leaned her head on Steve’s shoulder. She had her feet propped on the arm of his couch while she flipped through a magazine on her StarkPad.

            Steve nodded. “It’s not as bad as I expected.”

            Tasha tilted her head back to look at him. There was a hint of worry around her usually unreadable eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that’s about to change?”

…

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier.”

            “Why ‘Winter’?” It was probably the stupidest question Steve could have asked, but it was the first thing that came to mind. All these cowards had strange, threatening names: Loki, Chitauri, Mandarin. Hydra. Red Skull. A muscle jumped in Steve’s jaw. He kept himself at parade rest so Tasha and Director Fury couldn’t see his hands ball into fists. “What’s he after?”

            “You.”

            Steve snorted. “That’s new.” Wasn’t that what they were all after? Hydra, SHIELD, even the Army, back in the good old days. After his blood. Everybody wanted a drop of a serum they couldn’t control. Steve just wanted to keep his soul. _A good man,_ Dr. Erskine’s voice said to him through the aching spread of time. Steve tried to believe it. “So you’re telling me a ghost’s after my blood.”

            “You’ll never find him.”

            Steve scowled at Tasha. “Why tell me if I’m not supposed to do anything?”

            “You need to be on the lookout.” Director Fury crossed his arms over his chest. “He took out three special agents last month.”

            Steve’s muscles tightened more. Three special agents lost in a _year_ sounded obscene. Three in a month? Three people like Coulson, just like that? “Then why haven’t you taken him out?”

            “We have no definite proof it’s him.”

            “Doesn’t seem to have stopped you before.”

            Steve wanted to take back the words as soon as he said them—not because they weren’t true but because he knew better than to mouth off to a superior officer. Bucky would be proud of him for it, probably. Tony would be proud of him, too, which was always a red flag. But he meant it. When Fury’s good eye narrowed, Steve straightened his back. “You think we should have acted differently?”

            “He’s killing our men. If we value their lives, we need to go after him now.”

            “Sounds like you’re giving the orders now, Captain.”

            Back down, Steve told himself. A sudden streak of Buckyish rebellion made him pull himself up to his full height. “Damn right.”

…

            Director Fury gave orders for Steve to be confined to the Helicarrier for a week. No missions, no training, no outbound or inbound calls. Just a cage. Steve paced his room, intimately understanding Bruce’s jittery hatred of small spaces. He hit his pillow a few times before leaving it be. If he punched the feathers out of it, he wouldn’t be getting a new one. This wasn’t the Tower. This was a barracks.

            “Steve?”

            Steve whirled around to glower at the voice in the door. He didn’t want Tasha around right now, not when she hadn’t spoken up for him. He was ready to snap at her when he realized her skin was ashen. She clutched the doorframe so tightly that her knuckles were white. He crossed the room in two strides and caught her by the shoulders. His chest squeezed impossibly, painfully tight. “What happened?”

            Beneath his hands, Tasha trembled. _World War III_ , Steve thought sickly. Then she said, “Director Fury’s been shot.”

…

            Tasha pulled herself together by the time they stood outside the operating room, staring at Fury’s prone form. At least she appeared cool and collected. She held her hand just within Steve’s reach. Whenever he squeezed it, she squeezed back so hard his fingers popped. “I knew him.”

            _Fury?_ Steve almost said. Then he understood. “The Winter Soldier?”

            “In Russia. The Red Room. We were both…” Tasha broke off, chattering in Russian. Steve held her hand until she came back to him. “He has a specific skill set as well. We trained together. He was always very good at what he did.”

            “Did he hurt you?” Steve’s voice was rough.

            Tasha gave him a sharp smile. “They all did.”

            Steve fought back a wheeze. “God, Natasha.”

            “Why, are you looking for another reason to kill him? No. He was the best. The—well, kind isn’t a word any of them know. It’s not even a word I know.”

            “It is now.”

            Tasha looked at him with wide, haunted eyes. “You really believe that?” Steve stayed quiet. He stroked the inside of her wrist with his thumb. The skin there was impossibly fragile and soft. She looked away, eyes lost again. “We thought of running away together, once. We were the same age. We appeared the same age, anyway. We thought of going to Paris, to London…he used to tell me about London on his lucid days. He said he’d been there on leave. He never said on leave from what.”

            “But—”

            “But then he went back into storage. They thought he was getting too soft. They thought I was making him too soft.” Tasha bared her teeth. Steve almost laughed hollowly at the notion of Tasha making anyone soft. She was the hardest of them, the one most willing to make a kill shot when the rest of the Avengers held back. “They said he’d been thawed for too long, so they decided to put him on ice between every mission. I only saw him once after that. He didn’t remember me.”

            “On ice?” _You were in the ice for seventy years, Cap._ Steve’s throat went dry. He swallowed. “You mean like cryogenics from science fiction? The Winter Soldier…” He shook his head. “Does Fury know about this?”

            Tasha shook her head. “Just Coulson and Clint, and now you.”

            “But…why?”

            “There are some things—ach.” Natasha spit more Russian. “There are some things even Fury couldn’t handle knowing.”

            “I have to go after him.” It was the one thing Steve knew right now, deep in his bones. He had to find the Winter Soldier. Good or evil or somewhere in between, he’d shot a man Steve cared about. He’d shot a man, period. Steve couldn’t sit on this damn ship doing nothing for one more minute.

            Tasha threaded her fingers with his. Her nails dug into his skin. “I’m going with you,” she said. For the first time, Steve could hear the traces of a Russian accent in her voice.

            “Good.” He nodded. “You—and someone else.”

…

 

            Sam toyed with the flaps on his folded wings as the three of them strode across the Helicarrier’s platform. “This guy’s a spy. A ghost, right? That’s what the report said. So how am I supposed to know it’s him? He’s not gonna be wearing a big star on his chest like you, Steve. How do we know the good guys from the bad guys?”

            Tony would have gone into a long diatribe about moral absolutes. Steve didn’t have time for that. “If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad.”

…

            They watched the Soldier’s last known location for a week with no sign of him. On the eighth day, a pack of teenage boys dragged a kid half their size down the pavement and started bashing his head in right in front of the house. Steve was out the door in an instant, Sam hot on his heels. They hadn’t even bothered to put their uniforms on. “Get off of him. Get!” Steve snarled, knocking the bigger boys aside. “You’re disgusting, all of you! What do you think you’re doing, giving him hell? Get out of here!” They scattered, leaving the bloodied little boy in the middle. He whimpered when Steve held out a hand to him. Steve took a deep breath so he could speak gently. “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t let them hurt you.”

            Behind him, the world exploded into orange fire. Instinct told Steve to jump over the kid, but he was already gone, sprinting down the street. The blast knocked him off his feet, heat searing his skin. It stole his hearing for a minute. He staggered to his feet, adrenaline making his limbs shake. The first thing he heard when his hearing returned was Sam screaming, “Fuck!”

            Their safe house was a ball of flame.

            Steve ran straight into it.

            Tasha, Tasha, no, he couldn’t lose Tasha. No, he couldn’t, Clint would kill—he couldn’t, Bruce would—Tony would—Thor—Tasha who’d laid her life on the line for him, who’d bared her heart for him when every part of her training told her no, Tasha who’d jumped on a Chitauri’s back to close the portal—Tasha who could foxtrot and Charleston. Tasha whose hair looked like Peggy’s when she curled it. Not Tasha. No. No—

            He found her in a corner of the house, curled beneath his shield. It had sheltered her from the worst of the blast, but there was still blood in her hair. She tried to stand on her own when he reached for her. Her legs gave out. “Don’t,” he said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. He lifted her easily, resting her against the shield. She’d used him as a springboard in battle, but he’d never held her before. He hadn’t realized she was this light. Her head lolled against his shoulder as he sprinted out of the flames.

            “Steve, duck!” Sam yelled. Steve tucked into a roll, Tasha pressed to his aching chest. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as a bullet whizzed overhead. As soon as he pulled out of the roll, Tasha stumbled to her feet. She still looked dazed, but she pulled out her gun and shot at their assailants with eerie accuracy. Steve used his shield to block the next round. The bullets rattled off the vibranium. “Steve!”

            “It’s him. Call the Helicarrier. Tell them we need backup. Now!”

            Steve started forward. The first time Sam grabbed his shoulder, he shook him off. The second time, Sam’s fingers dug in so hard they pinched a nerve. “What are you gonna do?

            Behind Steve, fire roared. He glanced at Tasha, a deadly aim with blood dripping into her eyes. She’d called the Winter Soldier the best of a bad lot, and he’d still been willing to kill her. Steve’d seen burned bodies before. He wasn’t going to bury his friend like that. “I’m gonna take him out.”

…

            From the reports, Steve knew that he and Winter Soldier were about the same height. He knew the Soldier had a metal arm and kept his dark hair long. From Tasha, he knew he’d been a real soldier once, the kind that spent his leave in European capitals. He was supposedly a man.

            When the Soldier stopped in the middle of choking a policeman to look at Steve, Steve took a good look at his dead eyes and thought, _no._ That wasn’t a man. That wasn’t even human. _You can smell crazy on him,_ Bruce had said of Loki, who for all his machinations had still had some fevered light in his eyes. What did that make this person who tossed the policeman ten feet, like a ragdoll, and strode toward Steve?

            _Evil_ , Steve though. He took a running start and punched. The Soldier blocked it, so Steve swung up with his shield. The Soldier blocked that, too. The force of it made the bones in Steve’s arm shudder. Block, hit, hitchkick, damn, they were evenly matched. The Soldier didn’t fight like a machine. He fought like a maniac. He fought like the dogs the man behind Steve back in 1930s Brooklyn kept chained up in his apartment. Soon, it was all Steve could do to block each hit with his shield. Then the Soldier’s steel-toed boot caught him in the stomach. In the split second he dropped, gasping, the Soldier grabbed him by the throat with his metal hand and lifted him off his feet.

            The pressure in Steve’s head was unbelievable. He grabbed the Soldier’s metal fingers in a desperate attempt to pry them away. “Bastard,” he wheezed. His ribs popped. “Monster!” His legs kicked out. Dark spots crackled in front of his eyes. He couldn’t think straight around the pressure and the adrenaline that told him to run or fight. He was ten again, trapped by some bloody-minded bully who wanted to kill him just to prove his was bigger. “You goddamn _coward_.”

            A mask covered the Soldier’s mouth, making him even more unreadable, but his blue eyes widened. He squeezed Steve’s throat tight enough that Steve was sure he was going to pass out—and then he threw Steve to the ground and ran. Steve gasped, spitting blood onto the concrete, before he forced himself to his knees. His shield felt impossibly heavy. He lifted it anyway. If that bastard wanted to run, he would follow. He couldn’t let him get away. If he wanted to try to kill Tasha, then, well—

            _Do you want to kill Nazis?_

_I don’t want to kill anyone._

Steve stumbled. He tried to tell himself it was dizziness from being choked instead of shame. Whatever it was, it passed quickly enough for him to run after the Soldier. He caught up with him just as he vaulted through a window and into an abandoned warehouse. The Soldier yelled something in Russian and swung himself onto a catwalk. Steve followed, chest heaving. “Stop!”

            To his shock, the Soldier froze. He spun around to look at Steve. His eyes were wild now, not dead, the black tint around them smudged. The craziness in his gaze reminded Steve, with a jolt, of the sudden insanity of Bruce’s eyes flashing green just before the Hulk possessed him. It was enough to make him take a deep breath from his midsection instead of his chest. His lungs burned. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” he said. It felt wrong, so he repeated it. “I don’t want to kill anyone.” He could see Erskine’s face in his mind, the gently probing way he regarded everyone. The trust, the faith. His hands shook. “But you would have killed my friend. She was your friend, too, wasn’t she? In the Red Room. Sound familiar? Natasha? You were going to run away with her. You really want to kill her?”

            The Soldier’s muscles bunched. Steve raised his shield, preparing for a blow. Of course words wouldn’t work against someone that crazy, that evil. But the Soldier jumped back instead of forward, flying down the catwalk and launching himself out the nearest window and onto the roof. Steve leaped after him with a cry. “Hey. She was your friend!”

            When he threw the shield, he expected it to knock the Soldier down. It was at least supposed to make him stumble. The Soldier wasn’t supposed to turn around as if they did this every day and catch it. It knocked the wind out of Steve. He tried to take a deep breath—but seized up again when he made eye contact with the Soldier. Insanity still lurked around the edges, but his eyes were frightened, hurt, and achingly sad. Steve was caught between fury and unexpected compassion. A man kept on ice, brainwashed for his cause, a man who had treated Tasha well when he was allowed to, for God’s sake—a man who looked at Steve like a kicked dog. Steve took a trembling breath. “Just put the shield down.”

            For a second, Steve thought—prayed—the Soldier would actually do it. Then he threw the shield straight into Steve’s stomach.

            Tasha, Steve thought as his head cracked against the ground. Sam. He couldn’t get up; the weight of the Soldier’s boot on his chest was too much. So he was going to die beneath someone’s boot, too weak in the end to do anything, despite the serum, despite what little good Erskine had seen in him. Steve wanted the Tower. He wanted Bucky. He wanted to go home.

            The Winter Soldier crouched, his weight still on Steve’s chest. His metal fingers pressed against Steve’s bleeding head. His gaze turned terrible, then sad, then terrible again. His blue eyes looked so familiar. Steve frowned through the haze, trying to think. The fingers against his head pressed until he cried out. “Bucky,” he said. His chest felt like it was on fire. Even after all these years, he still yelled for Bucky when he needed help. If only he could come back from the dead, if only Steve could go back to him, if—

          The fingers on his head stilled. Shock flickered in the Soldier’s eyes. “What?” the Soldier breathed through his mask. Steve’s heart slammed into his throat. He knew that voice. He knew that voice. What—how—no—“Steve. Steve,” the Soldier rasped. It was the voice that read him the paper while he was sick, the one that introduced him to dames and called him a punk. "Steve, Steve, Steve."

            Steve thrashed. No, this couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t know those eyes or that hair or that voice. It wasn’t possible. It—

            The butt of the Winter Soldier’s rifle slammed into Steve’s head. His eyes rolled back, and he knew no more.

…

            “Steve. Steve!”

            “Fuck, I knew we should have come with him. Why the fuck didn’t—”

            “You’re not SHIELD, Stark.”

            “Go fuck yourself, Birdbrain, I didn’t ask you.”

            “You arrogant—”

            “Stop this! You are not aiding Friend Steve!”

            “Where’s Clint?”

            “He went after the Soldier with Tasha.”

            “Bruce, is he okay?”

            “Shh. Shut up a minute. His head’s going to hurt enough without all of you yelling.” Gentle fingers prodded Steve’s head. He hissed when they hit a sore spot. His dry mouth tasted like vomit. He couldn’t quite open his eyes. “Easy. It’s all right. Breathe.”

            “Bruce?” Steve opened his eyes a fraction. Dr. Banner’s worried face swam into view. “What…”

            “Natasha called us.”

            “Tasha!” Steve tried to sit up. Bruce blocked him with a hand on his shoulder. “The fire, she—”

            “She’s fine. Ran off with Flyboy. Flyboy the first, anyway.” Tony spoke quickly, tensely. He was scared, Steve realized. They all were.

            “With Clint. But…” It all came back to him in a rush. The fire, the Soldier, being choked, the warehouse, those eyes, first dead and then mad and then—Steve threw off Bruce’s hand and forced himself to his knees. When Thor started forward to help him, Steve shoved him away. He couldn’t tell whether he was going to vomit or cry. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be, but he knew those eyes. “Bucky.”

            “What?”

            “It’s Bucky. It’s Bucky. Oh God, it’s Bucky.” The others frowned. Steve stared at them through burning eyes. His arms shook. He could hardly hear himself speak over the roaring in his ears. _“The Winter Soldier is Bucky.”_

            

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I've taken liberties with canon, but fanfiction in general is "cool people taking massive liberties with canon," so there you go. I love Falcon to death but haven't been exposed to him enough. Point me in the right direction.


End file.
